MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE MARCH 2017 ﻿

CARING PARENTS
As you plan to go into marriage remember that your parents, who have been caring for you still have their hearts with you. They still think about you and may tend to oversee or monitor your life, even after marriage. They have interest in your marriage and see it as their exclusive duty to care for both of you. They expect feedback on your experiences in your new home.
So, be mindful what you discuss with them. And you really don’t have to start taking your issues in the home to them anyway. You are just coming into the married life and everything is new. You are learning with everything that ensues, and with everyday that goes by. You need to deliberately plan on how to make the marriage successful. This is the sole responsibility of you and your spouse and it must be solely carried out by you both.

So, don’t run to give your caring parents the reports of your new home. Tell everything to God and your spouse.
CONCERNED PEOPLE:
The concerned people are friends and well-wishers of the newly married couple. The people in this category are close and free with either of the couple or both of them. They ask questions varying from very minute, insignificant matters to weighty marital matters. They might be concerned about how the couple are doing in their home or how the husband is making ends meet with his meagre income. At times, they even want to know if the wife is submissive at home. Some concerned friends want to know how Spiritual the husband is. What do you do as the questions of concerned people keep pouring in?
Your response is a simple one. Ask the concerned people whether they have anything at stake if your wife or husband falls below their expectations. The concerned friends cannot nurture, care for and train your spouse for you. They cannot even help you in understanding him or her. So the best bet is to leave them and cleave to your spouse.
COUNSELLING PASTORS:
It sounds queer that you have to leave your counselling pastors. Without any doubt, you would have gotten used to the pastor before your wedding. Your series of visits to him for counselling might have encouraged you to repose a high degree of confidence in him. He knows every bit of your life. All this is alright as a spinster or bachelor.
After your marriage however, you cannot continue with the counselling pastor. His counsel might make you as a wife, a domestic misfit. He might still counsel you to spend the greater portion of your time praying. He might not come to the full realisation of your new life and responsibility. By oversight, he might forget that you need to cook, wash and do other chores.
The husband is the head of the home and every matter should be reported to him, not to the pastor. He is closer to the wife’s heart. She should take all discouragements, disappointments and distress to him. You MUST leave the counselling pastor and cleave to your loving husband or wife.
There are however difficult areas where you need to see the pastor for counselling. I will draw an analogy here. A student in the College or University does not need to go to the University Teaching Hospital for a slight head-ache, the same thing goes for a minor bruise. But when there is a major accident and the student suffers from a compound or open fracture, he cannot take care of that in the hostel, using first aid. He must go to the Orthopaedic Hospital.
It is the same in the day-to-day handling of issues that arise in your marriage. There are innumerable minor problems and misunderstandings which the newly married couple will sit together to talk over. But if there is a major problem that is beyond their control, they will mutually consider seeking the counsel of their pastor, or wherever help can be sought scripturally.
Now, the message I am trying to pass across here is that you MUST leave every other person, no matter how important they are, and cleave to your husband or wife.
“And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.”

‭‭Matthew‬ ‭19:5-6‬ ‭KJV‬‬
THE WORD “cleave” means to have a bond that cannot be broken. The strongest type of adhesive is called “glue”. And in the Hebrew, “cleave” means one is glued together in a covenant relationship with another person. To cleave is for two hearts to be totally committed to one another. It is not just a physical joining for all to see. The two who cleave together must be joined in will, emotion, spirit, heart, ambition, desire, thought and life.
The Hebrew word for marriage is KIDDUSHIN which means consecration or state of being set apart. Marriage then, is a consecration of two people to each other.
This is made clear in

1 Corinthians 7:3-4:

“Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: and likewise also the wife unto the husband. The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife.”

‭‭1 Corinthians‬ ‭7:3-4‬ ‭KJV‬‬
In marriage, you become totally yielded and submitted to one another.
This relationship is a mutual one. Many people, in their ignorance, say that the wife must be committed and yielded while the husband can remain indifferent. But this is wrong. The Scripture makes it clear that commitment between a couple is a mutual affair.
1 Corinthians 7:33-34 further affirms that relationship in marriage should be such that benefit both husband and wife.
“But he that is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife. There is difference also between a wife and a virgin. The unmarried woman careth for the things of the LORD, that she may be Holy both in body and in spirit: but she that is married careth for the things of the world, how she may please her husband.”

‭‭1 Corinthians‬ ‭7:33-34‬ ‭KJV‬‬
It is imperative that the husband pleases his wife just as she pleases him. Contrary to what many people believe, it is not a sign of weakness for a man to please his wife.
If the advise of friends and parents go contrary to the injunction that wives should please their husbands and vice-Versa, such advice is wrong and unprofitable, and should be discarded.
DO IT GOD’S WAY.

You Shall Be Glad You Did.
MARANATHA
JESUS IS COMING SOON

BE PREPARED.
We shall not miss RAPTURE in JESUS Mighty name amen🙏
Shalom